3 ms·

I think it ultimately comes down to the level of primary school teachers, and good luck reversing that. I taught at a community college some classes for future

I think it ultimately comes down to the level of primary school teachers, and good luck reversing that. I taught at a community college some classes for future elementary school teachers. When I found things like 1/2+1/3=2/5 I tried my best to get everybody's attention as to how important fixing this misconception was, especially given they'd be teaching children in a few years... Unfortunately, I mainly received questions about how much of an impact an error like that would have on their grades. Major sigh...

throwawayjava 9y ago
> Unfortunately, I mainly received questions about how much of an impact an error like that would have on their grades. Major sigh... "You will fail the entire assignment on which the error was made." If only... :)
dmix 9y ago
This a merely a symptom of bad schooling, not the students (well maybe a little bit the students and the math/learning-hostile culture they grow up in). There should be no reason why kids who spent such a large part of their childhood all day long, 5 times a week, in a learning institution and can't demonstrate basic learning despite getting good enough grades to get in college. Don't most college courses requiring math have an algebra recap course to start in first year? Likely as a result of this lack of basic math literacy. I honestly don't blame a lot of kids who enter college not knowing how to add fractions. Math classes are pretty awful in most schools and they likely just memorized enough stuff before tests then subsequently forgot it. They didn't have any deep grasp of the fundamental rules, such as finding a common denominator. Although there is no excuse for answering that by guessing. When I started a journey down learning advanced math I bought 'Forgotten Algebra' [1]. It's a great recap over everything taught in elementary/high schools and can be finished pretty quickly. Any college course involving math should make this required reading the summer before school or as part of first year for those who fail a basic math test. I'm convinced this wouldn't been nearly as necessary if we had classrooms with the Khan Academy model with homework in class in group settings with the teacher walking around helping and lectures watched online, with interactive teaching tools. This is particularly useful for math. Something built on top of Sage (now called Vocal) [1] or Python notebooks would be great for this. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1438001509/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1438001509/ [2] https://cocalc.com https://cocalc.com

throwawayjava 9y ago

> Unfortunately, I mainly received questions about how much of an impact an error like that would have on their grades. Major sigh... "You will fail the entire assignment on which the error was made." If only... :)

dmix 9y ago

This a merely a symptom of bad schooling, not the students (well maybe a little bit the students and the math/learning-hostile culture they grow up in). There should be no reason why kids who spent such a large part of their childhood all day long, 5 times a week, in a learning institution and can't demonstrate basic learning despite getting good enough grades to get in college. Don't most college courses requiring math have an algebra recap course to start in first year? Likely as a result of this lack of basic math literacy. I honestly don't blame a lot of kids who enter college not knowing how to add fractions. Math classes are pretty awful in most schools and they likely just memorized enough stuff before tests then subsequently forgot it. They didn't have any deep grasp of the fundamental rules, such as finding a common denominator. Although there is no excuse for answering that by guessing. When I started a journey down learning advanced math I bought 'Forgotten Algebra' [1]. It's a great recap over everything taught in elementary/high schools and can be finished pretty quickly. Any college course involving math should make this required reading the summer before school or as part of first year for those who fail a basic math test. I'm convinced this wouldn't been nearly as necessary if we had classrooms with the Khan Academy model with homework in class in group settings with the teacher walking around helping and lectures watched online, with interactive teaching tools. This is particularly useful for math. Something built on top of Sage (now called Vocal) [1] or Python notebooks would be great for this. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1438001509/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1438001509/ [2] https://cocalc.com https://cocalc.com